What makes a Woman a Woman? (Or a Man a Man)

[Hullygully]

Spin off from TAATAAT.

Beyond the focus of mtf trans and "born-women" only spaces.

It made me very confused as well. My comments stand if we are talking about FtoM, but they make no sense whatever for MtoF.

I understand that some people believe that gender is due to socialisation and not an inherrant (sp?) feeling we have that makes us identify as female or male

But what about the case of David Reimer. He was reassigned from male to female after a circumcision that went wrong as a baby. Raised as a girl, given hormones to grow breasts at puberty age, had his testes removed but never felt like a girl. He went back to living as a man but his life was ruined

If gender is a social construct, why did this man's maleness come through and why couldn't he be reassigned successfully?

I think sex is a biological reality i.e. if you are born with a female body you are a woman. Gender is the gender roles that society excpects us to play. For example, women are supposed to love looking after the house, shopping, make up, etc. Some do as do some men.

MsCellophane, i think you have raised a really good point there. I think you have answered your own question too, he is genetically male and has nothing residing in his genes that makes him anything other than male. So just giving him hormones and removing his testes (poor fucker) was never going to work. I think that, and i am willing to be corrected here, people who realise as they grow (whenever that is) that they are not comfortable with their gender, may well have genetic reasons for this that will remain unidentified or will be identified. So when these people undergo surgery and hormone treatment it is more about getting their hormones and everything in line with their genetic make up. Remember, it starts with the X and Y, but its not just the presence or lack of testosterone (women have testosterone too) etc, it is levels of this, other hormones and proteins present. So in answer to the OP, i think your genes make you male or female, but not just because of the X and Y. There are several recognised conditions that affect gender - turners being the ony one i can think of just now. I think there are probably other, less drastic permutations that will cause someone to be psycholoically opposite to their apparent gender.

Its funny, i never reallly give it any thought, im a woman but im not very ladylike or girlie, but still a woman, well, actually, im just me :)

You know lots of intersex people hate the alignment of transgender with intersex. And lots will have nothing to do with transgendered groups. Lots of intersex people think they are intersex - not really male or female.

Which makes the 3rd gender problematic then? If I understand you correctly?

i think it is complicated because there are so many reasons for people to be intersex i suppose, its not caused by one single condition, so its all so so confusing. Interesting, but confusing.

But if gender is social and we are 'feminine' due to being raised in a female way and gender doesn't exist- as I keep reading - then why couldn't this boy be successfully raised as a girl?

Woman means adult human female.

Or at least it used to.

Confusing sex roles with actual sex is a bit of a mistake.

Because gender blatantly isn't social, not completely. Gender stereotypes are, but who really fits all of htose anyway?

Gender might be social (it's a social hierarchy that places men over women), but sex is real.

It would be like bringing a boy up as a fish and then wondering why he might decide he was human.

People have traits, characteristics, things that make up their personality, things that they enjoy.

Our society takes these things and more or less divides them along gender lines - "men are like this and women are like that". Both the positive and the negative.

So women get things like caring, nurturing, interested in clothes, liking daytime telly and things like bitchy, vain.
Men get things like leadership, problem-solving, liking football and cars and on the downside things like aggression, inability to express emotion.

In reality it may be the case that men fit one of these gender roles better and women the other. However most people have traits from both and more people than generally thought have a majority of traits from the opposite gender.

So if a male child is castrated and raised as a girl, but they fulfil a quite "masculine" pattern of how they are, then they will feel a "wrongness".

That's how I see it anyway.

It may be the case that many men fit etc and many women fit etc

Missed an important word out!!!

Sardine, i have a mixture - Like to think im caring and nurturing, not interested in clothes at all, hate daytime tv, im a bitch, not vain. Im good at problem solving, not a great leader, total petrol head, can be aggressive and struggle to express emotion other than with my DP and DDs.

Gender is social

Sex is not.

According to gender stereotypes, I am a man! But clearly, I'm not. It's not me that's "wrong", it's the stereotypes.

If I lived in a society that was extreme in it's prescription of gender roles - say saudi or afghanistan - maybe I would feel that I was really a man?

I think some of this is down to circumstance. How many men in afghanistan are yearning to live as women? Of course we can't know. But what we do know is that in some countries where no-one in their right mind would want to be a women, there is a third sex for men who have these feelings, and it is well accepted.

I am way more comfortable with that than people who were born men legally becoming women.

Stereotypes on what I am good at and enjoy - I am a man.
What I look like - I fit stereotype well.
So that has always been a cause of tension in my life.

sardinequeen - I didn't realise you were a man

You wouldn't think it to look at me

It's this whole male brain issue.
Bloody thingy baron whotsit.

Yes the idea of a male brain . Seems bonkers to me.

I don't think that a male being raised as a female is about fitting the gender role "masculinity" but understanding at some deep level he is male SQ. I think it's more a demonstration that you can't change a fundamental biological part of a person.

Trans promotes the idea that we are just interchangeable body parts that can be added removed at will, a bit like a Meccano set. Nothing could be further from the truth of course.

nyac could you show where a transgendered person has made that comparison? I'd be interested to read it in context.

What comparison? I'm the one saying that the institution of trans treat bodies like meccano sets, with the idea that an inverted penis somehow becomes a vagina, or a pair of silicon breasts are a pair of actual breasts, or that artificial female hormones, give someone "femaleness". I'm not aware that any trans uses that sort of analysis about the institution of trans - they all act as if it's "real" sex and those are the real body parts they are talking about, not facscimiles.

They are, to them.

Everyone's reality is different.

But you said "trans promotes"

And legally it is real sex if they have gone through the requirements for a GRC.